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Comment by foodstances | Hacker News Reader

Installed it from the App Store, went through the signup process, saw that it requires a phone number, tried to register without one, couldn't, and then uninstalled it, all in about 30 seconds.

I cannot even guess why a social network about movies and TV shows requires my phone number, but you surely aren't getting it.

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Thank you. That saves me from having to spend time to figure out the same thing.

I hope soon some technological development will allow VoIP or any virtual type phonenumber to pass as a SIM verified number (or however it is done).

Everyone wanting your phone number is a huge privacy issue and it makes tracing you across platforms is more trivial than it should be.

Which of course is a good part of the reason companies do this.

In Norway, as far as I have figured out, anonymous burner phones is not possible due to laws requirng the buyer to show valid governmnent id that will be registered at the time of purchase.

You can pay someone else to buy it for you, but that has other issues,.

Surely providing your phone number ensures you are at least somewhat unique and unless you have access to a plethora of telephone numbers it’s a little more difficult to abuse the system?

That's valuable feedback. The only thing its used for is to see what of your friends are already on the platform for you to find them and follow them (if you choose to do so and opt in, it is completely optional to take that action). This was actually a feature request from Whatcha's beta users. I think making phone an optional choice overall is a great idea, though.

I wouldn’t follow feedback from HN users on things like that too closely. We are a different bunch. Most people won’t think twice to hand over their number and would rather you ask if it means they have a better experience.

It also only accepts US phone numbers, so now you have a wrong phone number for my account.

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